Eating from the Ground Up

The Homemade Kitchen

The Homemade Pantry

My editor once told me that she has to bake immediately upon returning from a trip. It doesn't matter how much laundry and unpacking I'm supposed to be doing, she told me as she fed me a buttermilk cake at one of our meetings. I need the kitchen to know that I'm back.
We had quite a time these ...

When we showed up at the pavilion at Cheeseman Park in Denver to set up for my father-in-law's funeral last Wednesday, there was a guy in tiny black shorts pole dancing for a camera crew. It was 9 in the morning , and I guess they figured they could shoot a yoga pole dancing video without getting in ...

When I was in sixth grade, I went on a field trip to a community college where we spent the day in a spaceship simulator. I was given some difficult job where I had to have a steady hand and a quick mind, and although we nearly crashed to Earth, it took us all outside of ourselves enough that for ...

Hello from here. (Cold, cold, cold.) I'm going to try to finally wash my windows today, as the world has lost some of its usual sparkle.
I'm mired down in January already, just when I'd really decided, last month, that I unapologetically love winter. But last month there were bonfires and ...

Someday I'm going to start a bakery where all I sell is everyday, unexceptional, nothing special, totally delicious cakes. They'll mostly be in square pans, and I'll fill a whole fridge in the kitchen with buttermilk. There will be tea, too, and I'll open from 2 to 5 so people can come and sit and ...

The plum trees have gone crazy. Both the proud peacocky one in the corner (tiny fruit that taste like candy), and the sturdy and reliable pillar of fruit production in the back center (larger, tarter, shaped like a heart). There are plums in every colander and bowl in my kitchen, and there's nowhere ...

And like that, the conversation turns from popsicles to lunch boxes. It must be that moment of the summer when it instantly becomes clear that the end is near. Happy ides of August.
I took these pictures the other day. The girls put down their comic books and let go of being bored for a few ...

Again.
I start writing on an ordinary day. I put it down with the hope of finishing later, and then in that time in between, the New York Times starts yelling at me from my phone. I check the news, I check Twitter (which on the whole I don't love, but it's always where I go when I try to figure ...

If you were worried that there wouldn't be anything to get up and knead and roll and shape in your quiet-morning-everyone-is-sleeping-or-watching-cartoons kitchen, no need. Here you go. We've got scones!
Way back when the sun shone and we wore T-shirts (Summer, Fall? I can't remember--all I see ...

This is a different radish (perhaps the sexiest of them all).
Elizabeth at Indian Line Farm grows these every year, and they store so well through the Fall that I find myself talking about them through both the November and December holiday markets. "Sell the black radishes!" She tells ...

I’m Alana, and I write about food, family and the wonderful chaos that ensues when the two combine. If you’re new to the site, here are a few good places to start, or learn more about me on my about page.